[kibwen]

Yes, I'm guilty of painting with an overbroad brush here in an attempt to emphasize the difference in scale between then and now. It's not the case that the collapse of Roman authority had no effect on the people of the former territories; it certainly led to an indisputable loss of living conditions across the board, including in industrial output. But my point is that, in the event of a modern collapse, we aren't going to revert to some "checkpoint" of irreversible technological progress; we could just as likely revert to the living conditions of a denizen of the remnants of the Eastern empire as of 600 AD (and that might be an optimistic outcome!). Technological progress is not a one-way street, is my meaning, and from our lofty perch, we are entirely capable of crashing hard to Earth.